This past week, the Texas state Senate passed the Open Carry bill. According to the law, when it becomes official, citizens can legally open carry firearms into most public places. That would include (but not be limited to) churches, college campuses, and other public areas. Presumably, private businesses would retain the right to bar their […]

Recently, the Oklahoma state legislature continued a national assault on U.S. History. Yes, I’m sure that caught your attention. It really isn’t an assault on U.S. History per se. It is an assault on Advanced Placement U.S. History as the proposal would have them defund it. In plain English, that means that public schools in […]

The Houston Chronicle has been buzzing over the last several weeks. A teacher in HISD wrote a column that talked about teacher burnout and why it happens. Of course, while I am a teacher, it isn’t prudent for me to comment about what is going on in HISD or at Westside High School. After all, […]

The headline should probably read “an inconvenient truth,” but I thought this deserves a little more seriousness than that. KIPP Academy has been operating in Galveston since Hurricane Ike ravaged the island and put a dent in enrollment in Galveston. According to tale, it costs about 1.5 million more to run the KIPP campuses than […]

In my last piece, I addressed some of the reasons why American public schools perform worse on standardized tests than their counterparts around the world. Of course, in such an article you can never fully explain things that require further explanation. So, this article serves as both further explanation and an exploration into my own […]

Every year there is an annual hand-wringing over American Educational Achievement scores. It seems we rank 26th in this and 19th in that. So, the annual blame game begins. Is it the fault of the teachers for not teaching the students? Is it the fault of administration and state governments for not giving teachers the […]

There was an episode of ‘King of the Hill” where Bobby Hill joined a youth group at their church. The youth group seemed to be more about making Christianity cool than anything substantive. At the end of the episode, Hank told Bobby that he didn’t want God to wind up in the box of junk […]

Unless you’ve been living underneath a rock, you’ve undoubtedly heard about the recent tragedy at Spring High School. Those of us in the political commentary business (though it pays poorly) often get accused of using tragedy to our own advantage. The left accuses the right of doing it and the right accuses the left of […]

A column appeared in the Chronicle this past week. Unfortunately, it is too old for me to link to it easily. Even addressing it threatens to get my progressive card revoked. Anyone that knows me knows I occasionally have to take on the establishment within our own political group. I’ll try to be as evenhanded […]

It certainly has been awhile since the Hurricane has been up and running. I can only notice the irony that the state of the site mirrors my career in some unusual way. For those that don’t know me, I spent my first fourteen years of my career as a teacher and counselor before our beloved […]